All evenly confusing, as my mind hates statement modifiers. I try to prevent using them as long as possible. To mestatement if expression; reads as utter crap. I prefer reading expression and statement;. YMMV. I completely realize not all our minds work the same, so any other reader might be confused the other way round. Mixing these will hurt both.

The only statement modifier I am comfortable with is for in simple expressions like s{\s+$}{} for @foo;.

With the Scotch example, I definitely prefer the second sentence. With the first, my hopes on a good single malt are trashed when hitting "if" :)

until in there is a loop condition, not a single point of decision condition. Maybe that is what is important to my brain. The condition is most likely checked several times. My native language however is not English, so that might be of influence.